Never too Old to Be Afraid
by GhettoGorgeousGangstaGirl
Summary: The Nightmare King is drawn to a large suburban house but a fear he hasn't felt since his crushing defeat by the Guardians of Childhood. What he hopes to find is a a child cowering under their sheets from whatever monster may hide in the darkness but it's not the child's fear that called to him.
1. Chapter 1

(So Pitch. His turn. I feel SO bad for him. He gets the short end of everything. He wants to be believed in or he just wants a child even if he doesn't remember ever having one. He's just a very sad character. Now I'm not saying he's not broken. Because he is. But he's not evil. Just twisted. This story is going to follow the events of the movie but the characters will be closer to the Books. Except Jack obviously since he's not in the books yet. Really I'm just mixing and matching as I see fit.

Working on Jack's story all. Trying to think of something for Bunny. And for my readers who are waiting for other stories don't loose hope! I do intend to write a Two-Face story it's just... harder then I thought and the Daredevil story is still happening. I just don't have an abundance of time is all.)

Fresca Smith spends her days milling around her house with little to do ever since she was fired from her hostessing job a few months back. She never had been able to hold a job. Though usually she would still go out. Drive into town and walk around the city. Watch the people. Though not much anymore. She wasn't sure what happened. Maybe she had stayed out a little too late or she'd chosen the wrong day to save on gas by walking but she'd made a terrible mistake going out that day.

It had been a normal day. She spent the day in town, found a small cafe to get some lunch and observed the daily life of others, something she'd enjoyed doing since she was young. That night was when things got complicated. She'd chosen to walk into town that day rather then driving, something she would do from time to time. What she expected was to go home and, have some dinner, and go to bed. Not to be mugged at gun point by a stranger at her own front door. He'd come barreling out of the house with an overstuffed sack. He brandished his weapon and demanded she hand over whatever was on her and do as he said. Unfortunately she didn't have much, whenever she went into town she brought just enough money for food so she wouldn't be tempted to buy anything she didn't need. Petrified and stammering she tried to explain that she didn't have anything on her but he wasn't hearing it. In her neighborhood it was rare to find a women who didn't have a wallet full of bills and chiming with expensive jewelry. In an attempt to pacify him she fulled the change from her sandwich out of her pocket, a measly $3.47, but he didn't get a chance to take it the porch light of a nearby house came on, the residence roused by the commotion, and he took off down the street without a word leaving his ill gotten gain behind in the panic.

Dealing with the police afterward had been an incredibly frustrating ordeal. She didn't have much of a description since it had been dark and she had been panicking. Afterward they preceded to ask her if she may have known him, which she didn't and told them as much. At some point she felt as if they were trying to convince her that the whole ordeal didn't happen after she told them there were not witnesses and finally the most frustrating was near the end when they asked her why she was out to begin with as if it had been her own fault her being out late to begin with. "I'm sorry I expect to be safe in my own neighborhood." She'd snapped. They hadn't liked that at all.

Since then she'd fixed the window he'd broken to enter and had the alarm system upgraded.

Nothing happened to her that night. She wasn't hurt, it wasn't even a successful mugging and she knew that, but for some reason she couldn't shake the fear the whole event had put in her. No matter how she tried she couldn't stop herself thinking about all the thinks that _could _have happened to her and the chances that it could happen again with a very different ending.

That night she'd had a terrible time getting to sleep and ever night since. She would leave her house as little as possible and even then only briefly. At first she didn't think anyone noticed. As much as she loved to be around people she never very social so she never spoke to anyone but somehow, somewhere, someone noticed and word got out that she had become a recluse. When she did go out people would ask how she was and if she was alright and on occasion the neighbors who weren't to absorbed in they're own lives out stop by. None of it did much good, though. Through it all she stayed in the safety of her house and waited out the days.

One day she got a call from her sister. This came as quite a surprise from Fresca. She would get calls from family from time to time, usually her mother checking to see if she'd made anything or herself yet, but Mindy _never_ called her. News of her break down had reached her family and they were worried. That almost made her laugh. The only thing she'd ever done that caused them to worry was choose not to get her doctorate. They wanted to help her and since Mindy was, conveniently, being transferred to the hospital in her town she would be bringing her daughter and moving in with Fresca.

Now Fresca would have loved to refuse this but that house isn't hers, it's her fathers. He owns several houses large houses around the states and insisted that she move into one of them 'until she finds her way'. She knew better. She knew it was just so they could keep an eye on her and do something like this. Now her judgmental sister and her offspring are going to move in and 'help get her back into the world' which means 'nudge her in the right directions' which means 'pester, herrass, and push her into going back to school and getting a doctorate for a career she doesn't want so she can be somebody'. Her almost mugging was the perfect catalyst for them so set this plan, no doubt long in the waiting, in motion.

Once it had become clear she couldn't argue her way out of this she quickly set about making the house presentable for Mindy's arrival. Normally this would entail cleaning and organizing but since Fresca didn't use much of the house besides the kitchen and her room this isn't what she needed to do. What she needed to do was run around and remove all of her art books and supplies from sight. Taking all of her old paintings off the walls and otherwise remove all evidence that she may still be practicing art. Not that she is. Fresca hadn't actually panted anything since she was 16 but she still like to surround herself with the things she loved. She'd hung up all her old paintings to remind herself of what she used to do and kept all of her old art supplied, some of which had long since dried up and become useless. She even still bought art books from time to time just to keep up with the world she'd wanted so badly to be apart of.

Why isn't she still painting if she loves it so much? Fresca asks herself that everyday and everyday she comes to the same answer that she's been giving since she first expressed interest in art. It's a waste of time. Because she'll never be somebody painting pictures. She'll never be successful and her name will never be worth anything. Lawyers, doctors, engineers. They are somebody and she should aspire to be like them. That's what her parents said to her and her siblings and for some reason she was the only one who couldn't take it to heart. Her sister had gone off the be a very successful pediatrician, her older brother is working his way up to Partner at a rising law firm and her youngest brother was on his way to becoming a psychiatrist and no doubt a very successful one. That left Fresca who had dreamed of being an artist.

She'd wanted to Illustrate children's books since she was little. Her parents though she may be slow when she was far more interested in reading the pictures then reading the words and they had been mortified when her first grade teacher asked the class what they'd wanted to be and she'd said "I wanna put pictures in books!" and pointed to the book shelf rather then sitting neatly and saying "I want to be a doctor when I grow up." like they'd taught her the night before and on the way to school. As she got older she made straight A's in school and was a model child except that she never seemed to grow out of drawing and painting like her parents had hoped. The last straw had been when she got her schedule for her sophomore year in high school and there in her chosen electives was Intro to Painting. That was when her dad finally lost it. He had been willing to put up with the mandatory art classes of Middle school and elementary school, though he grew more and more frustrated over the years as it became clear she was more concerned with them then her actual homework, but now in high school she was supposed to be thinking about her future and taking classes accordingly and there was no room in her future for art classes. That morning he threw out all of her supplied that he could find and dragged her, sobbing, into the principals office. That day at four o'clock rather then taking Intro to Painting, like she'd been hoping for, she sat in the very front row of AP Chemistry. Her grades suffered dramatically from there and she because a further source of embarrassment when she failed of but two of her classes freshmen year and flunked out of college. Part of her had hoped that would be the end of it and they would give up on her. Such was not that case. To them it meant they just needed to work more closely with her. Now she was living on an allowance, under they're surveillance, in they're house. If all that wasn't bad enough her sister Mindy, who would mock her pictures and painting 'for her own good', was going to join the party. No doubt with orders to keep they're parents informed of her every move. This was going to be fun.

(Ugh! This is so hard. I've spent HOURS trying to find a way to connect the books and the movies in a way that makes sense but I can't seem to make it happen. SO here's how we're doing it. The Movie takes place a LONG time after that books, which I'm going to say are the dark ages, and in order to justify North's immortality we're going to say that once the crisis from the books was over The Man in the Moon made them the Guardians they are in the movie. It's not a perfect fix but there you go.)


	2. Chapter 2

Fresca picked up Mindy and Melinda from the airport early that morning and drive home had been every bit as unpleasant as she expected it to be. Mindy asking her questions that she clearly wasn't interested in hearing the answer to and judging at every turn. and Fresca giving short dismissive answers hoping that soon they would just be riding in oppressive silence because that was better then any conversation they could possible be having.

"How've you been?"

"Good." _lie_

"How's the house?"

"Fine." _Pretty true. _

_ "_How's that receptionist job?"

"Lost it." _True. _

_ "_You lost another one? Ugh. You really need to start trying harder."

"..."_Damn_

"You know that's why your not getting anywhere. Because you're not trying."

"..." _They say that the driver is more likely to survive a car crash then the passenger. _

"If you tried harder then you wouldn't be living in one of dad's houses on an allowance like some teenager."

"..." _I wonder if that's true._

"If you tried harder you wouldn't have flunked out of college."

"..." _I guess that wouldn't be fair to Melinda. _

"And we all wouldn't be so disappointed in you."

"..."_ Or I could drive the car into a lake, jump out, save Melinda, and let Mindy go down with the ship. _

"You're not painting again, are you?"

Fresca's fingers tightened on the wheel. _Just and inch too far left would send us careening off the highway and into the on coming traffic below. _"...No."

"Good."

This carried on until they reached the house and by the time they were pulling into the drive way Fresca was regretting her decision not to deliberately crash her car. That conversation had gone on the entire two hour drive from the airport and Mindy was still going as they dragged the bags into the house. Luckily the house is an eight bedroom affair. It's would be so easy to set her up in a room on the other side of the house and work around her schedule. She may never have to see Mindy again. But her sister wouldn't allow that. Mindy would find her and force her into another conversation she didn't want to have.

She helped them carry the bags up the stares to the rooms and huffed as she let the luggage slide to the ground. "This one is mine." She said, pointing to the door closest to the stairs. She'd chosen it so she wouldn't have to go far to get to the kitchen in the morning. "All the others are in good shape so you can just pick one."

Melinda's eyes lit up. "I can really have any room I want?" Melinda looked just like her mother. Small and blond with green eyes and freckles. The biggest difference between them is Melinda's hair grows past her shoulders and Mindy has hider hips but the girl is only 9 so she still has time to catch up to her mothers figure.

Fresca is the only woman in her family to grow taller then 5'3''. She's also the only female with brown hair. That appears to be a predominantly male trait in her family, though she does have their moms green eyes. She didn't take care of her hair the way the other women in her family did either. Sure she washed it and brushed it out everyday but she didn't bother with the oils and the straighteners, preferring to let it go naturally. The most she did was get it cut every once in a while when the split ends started to come back.

She smiled and nodded. "Yep. Any room you want Mel."

The girl ran down to the corner room in the hall and hit the door lightly with her hand as if she was touch base in a game of tag, ignoring her mothers reprimand for running in the house. "I want this one! I can see in the backyard!"

Fresca laughed. She would be able to see the backyard from any of the back rooms and the backyard wasn't really much to look at anyway. Just the usual grass and a tree or two. There was also the pool but it wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. She didn't say anything about it though. If Melinda wanted to see out into the backyard from the corner room then she would see the backyard from the corner room. There wasn't any reason to argue with her.

It took a few hours to help the two of them completely unpack, especially after Mindy couldn't decided if she wanted the room closer to Melinda or Fresca. There was a moment when she thought her sister may just be doing it to be a nuisance. She was certainly thankful that the moving trucks wouldn't be arriving for another two days. Though she didn't understand why Mindy was bringing all of her furniture and decor to a fully furnished house.

The night Mindy and Melinda got to sleep hours before Fresca did. She stayed up late reading and when she could no longer focus on the words in front of her she sighed and attempted to get some sleep. The moment the lights were out she found herself wrapped in her blanket and peering out into the darkness like she did every night. Every creek of the house was an intruder creeping through the halls and every inky black shape was someone who had been waiting for this moment to come out of hiding. She hated how afraid she'd been since that day, even her own house wasn't safe any more.

A particular loud creak of the floorboards had her sitting straight up. After a moment she calmed herself down. She just had to remember that she wasn't alone in the house anymore. She now shares her home with her sister and a little girl. Any unusual noises would most likely be them. Though knowing that didn't it any easier to take her eyes off her open door. She could see directly into the hallway that was dimly illuminated by the window at the far end next to Melinda's new room.

The irregular creaks grew louder and closer, as if someone was moving down the hall. Fresca sat frozen in fear as she clutched her blanket to her. No doors had opened, she reasoned, so there couldn't be anyone walking around. Unfortunately she was wrong. Her heart dropped into her stomach when a figure stepped into her view, far too tall and slim to be either Melinda or Mindy.

Before she could stop herself a painfully audible gasp escaped her and she pressed herself against the headboard causing it to bump lightly against the wall. The figure paused mid step and stood stone still for a beat. Fresca jerked the covers closer to her face when suddenly she found herself staring into the most inhuman bright yellow eyes she'd ever seen, they were all of the intruder that she could see clearly in the dark. It would have been easy to compare then to a cat but the pupils weren't slit. They were round like hers but clearly meant for a much more nocturnal creature. The eyes narrowed, watching her closely, they almost seemed confused. After a moment the figure finally turned to face her fully, never did those eyes leaver hers. The intruder took a small tentative step towards pulling a small whimper from her and she tried to shrink further into the covers. An image of the bat she kept hidden by her bed flashed through her head but she couldn't seem to will herself to move.

The figure studied her reaction and after a moment revealed a mouthful of sharp jagged teeth in a menacing grin. A low deep chuckle filled her room, echoing from the shadows themselves followed by relaxed but sinister voice. "Well now, isn't this interesting?"


End file.
